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Spending Deal Sets Dangerous Precedent

Congressional leaders unveiled late Wednesday a bipartisan spending agreement to fund the government through the remainder of the fiscal year. The following is a statement from Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget:

Although 6 months late, we are glad that Congress is finally able to fund the government and that they’ll avoid another shutdown. Frankly, though, it should not have taken a $143 billion spending hike to grease the wheels of the appropriations process and compel policymakers to do their job. These levels of both defense and nondefense discretionary spending are more than Presidents Trump or Obama ever asked for, and in an era of historically high and unsustainable debt, it sets a dangerous precedent.

With trillion-dollar deficits set to return next year and trillion-dollar interest payments likely to appear within a decade or so, we can’t keep busting the budget with massive omnibus appropriations bills. Instead, we need to couple reasonable discretionary levels with significant new revenue and mandatory spending reductions and reforms.

We elect our leaders to be careful stewards of taxpayer money. Instead, they just keep on spending it.

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For more information contact Patrick Newton, press secretary, at newton@crfb.org.